Thursday, February 11, 2010

This last Sunday, bryan (organizer of Hello!Party and all-around kickass dude) held a test run of a site he's working on called Hello!Ranking (a "next-generation [Hello!Project] fan site that allows you to see how your favorites change over time and to share your rankings with others", to quote bryan himself), which I had the privilege of taking part in.

Normally I'm not the ranking type - it takes me FOREVER, in fact, unless I'm extremely familiar with the group (see: Momusu) - but seeing the site in action was very cool. Or, at least, what I saw was cool...those who participated only had access to the ranker itself.

(right now the design looks a little plain - bryan informed everyone that the final site will have pictures of each member to go along with their name when doing your ranking)

Essentially, us testers had access to three rankers: the group ranker, the groups ranker, and the artists ranker. The group ranker (pictured above, with my actual current MM ranking~) allows you to choose a Hello!Project group, choose whether you want to rank the current roster or all members that have ever been in the group (when applicable), and then you simply drag the members around into whatever order you want to rank them. After that, submit your ranking and voila! - your ranking is saved and added to the database of everyone else's rankings. The groups ranker allows you to rank H!P groups, both new and old - Morning Musume, Berryz Koubou, Country Musume, ROMANS, Buono, Coconuts Musume (ew), EcoMoni, etc. The artists ranker allows you to choose from every member of Hello!Project - new, old, graduated, active, inactive - and rank whoever you want. Fans will also be able to rank albums, singles, and individual songs. Very cool stuff!

Once the site goes live (hopefully soon), people will be able to create profiles so everyone can share their rankings, along with viewing overall statistics that pull together everyone's rankings so you can see where your favorites members, groups, songs, etc stand against all the others. The site will also be used to house detailed Hello!Project member profiles and a few other things that I don't remember (and/or may not be able to share - sworn to secrecy ;D sort of...). Overall, Hello!Ranking is shaping up to be a great resource and central hub for the H!P fan community. Keep an eye out here for when the site goes live!- cfb

(And for anyone who wants a preview of the site...bryan is planning another test run of the ranker this weekend, most likely Saturday afternoon. Pop on over to #helloranking on irc.rizon.net if you want to participate!)